2016 Election Night

In 2014, the story of a young woman with fatal brain cancer began making the rounds online and on TV news shows. Twenty-nine-year-old Brittany Maynard knew she was dying, and she wanted to do so on her own terms, by taking prescribed medication if her pain became resistant to morphine and unbearable. This desire prompted her to move to Oregon, where, by the time she died on Nov. 1, 2014, she had become perhaps the most widely known user of Oregon’s Measure 16, called the Death with Dignity Act. Maynard’s activism brought new attention to right-to-die legislation, and her widower, Dan Diaz, has lent his support to Colorado Proposition 106, the End of Life Options Act, which would make Colorado the fifth state to permit some form of assisted suicide. Modeled on Oregon Measure 16, Proposition 106 would allow terminally ill patients (those with less than six months to live, as determined by two doctors) to take a lethal dose of medication. To receive the drugs, the person would be required to voluntarily request it three times — twice orally and once in writing — with witnesses present. The measure would also criminalize the coercion of patients. A September Rocky Mountain PBS and Colorado Mesa University showed that 70 percent of registered voters favored the measure. Advocates include Gov. John Hickenlooper and the Boulder and Denver Medical Societies. A February 2016 survey of members of the Colorado Medical Society, the largest physicians organization in Colorado, found that 56 percent of respondents supported “physician assisted suicide.” The Catholic Church and disability rights groups are among those rallying against the measure, and the Denver Post also has come out against it, over concerns that it could “entice insurers to drop expensive treatments for terminal patients.”